Toothbrushing and flossing are fundamental steps in achieving good oral hygiene. The practice of flossing, unfortunately, has not met with widespread acceptance among the general populace even though it is acknowledged by the general populace that flossing is something that should be completed as part of good oral hygiene. Furthermore, even people who floss oftentimes do not perform adequate flossing in hard to reach areas of the mouth. Unfortunately, while most commercially available toothbrushes clean the outer buccal face of teeth adequately, they fail to provide improved cleaning of plaque and debris from the gingival margin, interproximal areas, lingual surfaces and other hard to reach areas of the mouth.
One reason that such toothbrushes do not adequately clean the rear-most molars (e.g. wisdom teeth or second molars) is that the one or more tufts secured to the toothbrush head at a location most distal from the toothbrush handle are not angled towards a direction along which the head extends from the handle. As such, these tufts cannot extend far enough past the end of the head of the toothbrush to sufficiently clean the molar teeth in the back of the mouth.
Additionally, in those brushes having tufts of bristles which angle towards the handle and other tufts which angle away from the handle, all of such tufts are essentially the same length and have the same cross-section. Consequently, while these angled tufts may clean one part of the teeth in a satisfactory manner, other parts of the teeth will not be cleaned sufficiently due to the homogeneous length, spacing and cross-section of the tufts.
Further, prior art toothbrushes disclose tufts of bristles having at most three different types of cross-sections. However, there are more than three parts of the teeth which need to be cleaned by a brush (e.g. the outer buccal face, gingival margin, interproximal areas, lingual surfaces and rearward most molars). As such, prior art brushes do not provide tufts of sufficiently varied cross-section specifically designed to clean all areas of the teeth.